Editor’s note: Yoav Shoham is professor of computer science at Stanford University and co-founder of Katango, which organizes Facebook friends into groups
The recent introduction of Google+ has been fodder for much Google-versus-Facebook discussion. At the center of the discussion has been the Circles component of Google+, which allows users to arrange their contacts in meaningful clusters (for example, “family” and “work”) and share different content with different clusters. Circles play a role that’s almost entirely analogous to Facebook’s lists, which have been around (if somewhat buried in the Facebook UI) for a long time. Facebook of course also has the notion of groups, separate from (and more recent than) lists. Here are some basic observations on lists, groups and circles that seem to have been glossed over in the various recent articles. → Read More
Here are some recent stories from TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
Editor’s note: The following guest post is written by Victor Wong, the CEO of PaperG, a local advertising technology company.
Conquering “local” remains one of the largest opportunities on the Internet today, and it seems as
though Twitter’s unique position has gone largely unnoticed. Today, Twitter is an amazing tool for
connecting people to the world, but it hasn’t yet successfully connected people to places they care
about. If Twitter chose to bridge that gap, though, higher user engagement and even monetization
would likely follow. → Read More
Over the last week, there’s been quite a bit of news swirling around Rupert Murdoch’s empire, including, most recently, the now infamous LulzSec’s pwnage of The Sun, News Corp’s daily tabloid newspaper.
On Monday, the loose network of merry hacktivists hacked into The Sun, pinned a fake news story about Murdoch’s supposed death on the homepage, redirected the site to its Twitter page, and brought down a number of other News Corp and News International websites — all in one fell swoop. → Read More
It’s been pretty fascinating to watch Netflix’s growth from a company that Blockbuster laughed at in 2000 (when Founder and CEO Reed Hastings and former CFO Barry McCarthy proposed to Blockbuster management that they run its online brand) to the single largest source of web traffic in North America in 2011.
There have been quite a few hiccups and ups and downs along the way, as the on-demand video provider has struggled with Hollywood studios, succeeded as leadership has pushed its service onto TVs, game systems, and mobile devices — and more recently, re-focused on its streaming business. → Read More
To celebrate the fact that my vacation during the last two weeks of August has been officially confirmed, I am posting the most massive infographic I have ever seen: “The Social Travel Revolution” brought to you by the folks at still-in-beta travel startup Tripl … CLICK THROUGH FOR THE GRAPHIC. → Read More
We’ve come across the latest in Slide’s series of projects developed within Google, VideoInbox – a combination daily newsletter/Facebook app that basically centers around the viewing, sharing and cataloguing of viral videos (proof that it’s from Slide here). Sign up for VideoInbox with Facebook Connect and you’ll get a daily email with “hand selected” viral YouTube videos like “Slow Loris With a Tiny Umbrella,” ”Rubik’s Cube Robot Is Smarter Than You” or “Bollywood Pizza Hut”.
Back in January of 2009, we noted that a “superstar team” was about to launch in the MMO space, with a startup called Ohai. A few weeks ago, Ohai was sold, as VentureBeat’s Deak Takahashi first reported. And at least two of those rockstars have now moved on. Susan Wu and Don Neufeld are the newest members of The Obvious Corporation, the idea incubator that was just re-started by the former Twitter guys, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jason Goldman.
Stone makes the announcement in a post today on the Obvious blog. “The most important part of creating this work culture and building these meaningful products is people — but not just any people. People that are often smarter than us, different from us, passionate like us, and dedicated to the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” he writes, stating that Wu and Neufeld, employees number four and five at Obvious, are those kind of people. → Read More
I’ve been meaning to address this Lytro thing since it hit a few weeks ago. I wrote about omnifocus cameras as far back as 2008, and more recently in 2010, and while at the time I was more interested in the science behind the systems, though it appears that Lytro uses a different method than either of those.
Lytro has been slightly close-lipped about their camera, to say the least, though that’s understandable when your entire business revolves around proprietary hardware and processes. Some of it can be derived from Lytro founder Ren Ng’s dissertation (which is both interesting and readable), but in the meantime it remains to be shown whether these “living pictures” are truly compelling or something which will be forgotten instantly by consumers. A recent fashion shoot with model Coco Rocha, the first in-vivo demonstration of the device, is dubious evidence at best. Read on for more detailed reservations about this admittedly exciting device. → Read More
Gotta love Tom Anderson. Newly reinvigorated by the launch of Google+, “MySpace Tom” has become a social power user (and regular TechCrunch contributor!). As a man at the forefront of the early days of the social wars, he’s obviously full of information. And today he decided to share a bit more. This time, it’s a fascinating story about the time Microsoft, not Google, was about to land the MySpace ad deal.
In a comment on (where else) Google+, Anderson tells the story in response to my most recent post about the Google/Facebook war before Google+. Based on a Quora thread, I noted that the 2006 search/ad deal Google signed with MySpace (Fox Interactive Media) may have been the true kick-off of hostilities between Google and Facebook. As a result, Microsoft signed Facebook — which later led to the famous investment. → Read More
Google has just acquired facial recognition software company PittPatt (Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition), according to an announcement on the startup’s site.
PittPatt, a project spawned from Carnegie Mellon University, develops a facial recognition technology that can match people across photos, videos, and more. The company has created a number of algorithms in face detection, face tracking and face recognition. PittPatt’s face detection and tracking SDK locates human faces in photographs and tracks the motion of human faces in video. → Read More
Google and Facebook are at war. We’ve known this for a while. Of course, neither side will admit to it, but they are. Winner takes the Internet.
After months of Facebook owning Google in just about every way imaginable (well, except search, of course — but the rise of social is slowly making search less important), Google has finally been able to strike back with Google+. And now a full-on social sharing race is getting underway. It may not be a winner-take-all race, but it will eventually be winner-take-most. We simply can’t share everything across 5 or even 3 networks. Google is fighting an uphill battle in this regard, but at least they finally have a weapon. → Read More
You may recall the SmartBird, a robot we saw back in March that mimics the flight of birds, flapping its wings like the real thing. The video we saw then was a bit too edited to get a feel for the bot, but luckily one of the inventors was invited to do a TED talk, and of course they had to set the thing free in the auditorium.
Check out the video. → Read More
New technologies usually allow for more. In the move from print media to the Web the “more” was comments, slideshows and of course rapid-fire content. In the move from VHS to DVDs the “more” was all sorts of behind the scenes footage and director commentaries. In the move from Blackberries to iPhones, the “more” was a wonderland of new apps and a browser experience that didn’t make your eyes bleed.
In a world of eBook readers, more is starting to creep in, but it’s unclear whether this is a more that will actually sell books, or a more that only a handful of superfans care about. → Read More
The only thing better than a leak is six leaks, which is exactly what we have for you today. Bundled nicely in the form of a 2011 LG Roadmap (discovered by PocketNow), five Android smartphones and one Mango-powered handset have found their way to the web.
Along with the recently announced Optimus Pro and Optimus Net, LG has quite a bit more in store for the rest of the year. However, we don’t expect that this is the entirety of LG’s 2011 smartphone lineup, so if you can’t find something you like here, fret not, more are sure to follow. → Read More
We’ve already seen bikes from both Audi and McLaren in the last year, so I suppose it’s no surprise to see competition from Porsche. The German sport car giant has actually had a bike for quite a while now, but I believe the new Sport and Rennsport are their first attempts at road-going bikes rather than the mountain variety. → Read More
It’s been just 11 days since Apple released Beta 3 of iOS 5 to developers, but a new Beta is already up in the air — literally. iOS 5 Beta 4 has just gone live, and it appears to be the first update to support installation via iOS 5′s new over-the-air update system.
We can’t actually get the update to work over the air right now, but the patch notes specifically define it as an option: → Read More
One thing most 30-something people in tech have in common is video gaming nostalgia. Generation X (and Generation i) can go on for hours discussing the merits of our favorite Nintendo games, our programming experience in school, and of course our beloved Ataris. Sure there were C64s and Amigas and such, but Atari’s 2600 and its successors were truly groundbreaking in the gaming world.
You can still find a few here and there, working even, but to be honest the machine is a little more humble-looking than my memory has it. But Urchin Associates had the brilliant idea to preserve this piece of computing history forever… in 24-karat gold. → Read More
It was a first. Yesterday, we were fortunate to welcome Google’s two principle architects of Google+, Vic Gundotra (VP Social) and Bradley Horowitz (VP Product), to the TechcrunchTV studio in San Francisco for an extended interview about what they call their “project”.
So what is Google+? As Gundotra told me yesterday, it is an attempt to “understand people” and to make human relationships the heart of the Google experience. Both Horowitz and Gundotra acknowledge that this is a major project, something that may, in the future, redefine the company. This unGoogle-like goal to,as Horowitz said, put “people first”, may well, in the long run, transform Google from a algorithmic company to a social one. → Read More
